Blog

Dr Seuss said "You can find magic wherever you look”... Last week I found magic in shadows. In both my inner and my outer world.

I felt stuck and isolated and alone. I felt frustrated and like I should “know better” than to be in that situation AGAIN. I was judging myself, a lot. I was not being my own best friend. I was ignoring my shadows and the parts of me that I would rather “didn’t exist”.

I was stuck in shame. I didn’t want to go out because if I did, people might ask how I was, and I would have to answer them with the truth or a lie. The truth would've sounded shitty and negative and I didn’t want to be a downer. The lie would be just that, a lie, and those never feel good either.

So I stayed at home, declined invitations and avoided people. I thought I was protecting myself from the judgement of others by keeping my shadows to myself. But it just felt lonely and dark and shit.

I forgot for a while that shadows are a part of our human nature. I neglected to realise that shadows exist because light exists.

Being human means being a part of nature, and although I have my own unique reality, the feelings I experience are shared. Other people feel it too.

I've learnt we are all unique… and the same. We all meet and experience our own shadows in life. The parts of us that sometimes we keep hidden because they make us feel ashamed or imperfect or unworthy.

All it took for me to remember that I’m not different, and that I am not the only person in the world to experience this, were the three words. “Yer, me too”.

A friend asked how my week had been, and I said “interesting”.. and gave a brief run down of events that had occurred and how I felt a bit shit and confused about it all. She listened, hugged me and said “yer, me too” in a “them’s the breaks” kinda way.

Suddenly I felt ok. Like I wasn’t broken or different or “less than”… I remembered that I’ve been here before.

I remembered that this is a part of my growth in learning to love and accept all of myself so that I can better love and accept others. Because if everyone has shadows and shit, then when I judge myself and mine - I'm judging others too. And this judgement doesn't help me connect or grow, but understanding and acceptance will.

So I'm learning to dance with my shadows and to see the magic in them. I'm accepting them as an important piece of a much bigger, beautiful picture.